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@techvitamin 2.1: Steve Murch, Founder/CEO of BigOven

Podcast conversation with Steve Murch and John Pollard about BigOven, food, machine learning and how people and families organize the creation of meals

Steve Murch

Steve Murch is a smart, humble and motivated guy who’s had an incredible run in tech.

Back in 1991 — after he’d done all the school (Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and HBS) — he was part of the initial Access team at Microsoft, launched their first online multiplayer games (zone.com), and after leaving founded VacationSpot (think HomeAway) with Greg Slyngstad — which they sold to Expedia in 2000. While at Expedia he led the Vacation Packages business, and helped revolutionize the way people buy travel.  He was also the Chairman of Escapia for five years, and has been a lecturer at UW’s Foster School of Business.

Faced with the grim prospect of early retirement or staying in the tech mix, he focussed on getting back to crafting software, eventually leading to BigOven…a recipe db/meal planner with more than 12M downloads.

In this episode we talk a lot about food, how tech can impact the planning and yes, cooking of meals, and what techs like machine learning and Echo may mean for how people behave in the kitchen and store.

Food waste and families eating together are both important priorities for BigOven, and Steve provides compelling evidence for why. Just one data point: it was found that eating two meals as a family per week was the only variable that could be correlated with being National Merit Scholars. (!)

As mentioned in the show…check out the 1956 vision of computers in the kitchen starting around 25 seconds in:

Also mentioned in the show, an experiment by Tesco in Korea for a virtualized store in a subway…just use your mobile device to scan, and have the groceries delivered:

Podcast conversation with Steve Murch and John Pollard about BigOven, food, machine learning and how people and families organize the creation of meals

Tesco’s Virtual Supermarket in Korea (Photo credit: designboom)

 

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Also published on Medium.